Watch for Feral Asses

 It begins with a very long trip from Poulsbo, to Las Vegas. We left on the 26th, and the 19 hour drive took a little over 25 hours (including a stop at Denny's). But we soon arrived at our destination of Red Rocks Canyon, where we spent the next seven days climbing as hard as we could. There were six in the group and despite the cold nights, the days were pretty spectacular. Our first day we spent up at Moderate Mecca and despite a two hour belay, we had a pretty good time until the wind kicked up and we had to head for shelter. We ended up going to the boulder fields where we played on the smaller stone until it got late and we had to head back to camp.

Camp was pretty baron and not much shelter was provided from the wind. We were all pretty tired from the drive and decided to eat and hit the sacks for another day.

Oh, and if you are wondering what "Feral Asses" have to do with anything, in the canyon there are apparently Feral Donkeys that roam the desert range. We didn't see any though, otherwise there'd be a picture to share.

 
Day two was spent at Cannibal crag and while much of it was out of my climbing level I did manage to run up a nice little 5.4 that super easy and provided a little confidence building. I also managed to climb a 5.8 that was hiding in the shade, and while my fingers were too numb to actually feel anything, I am sure it could have been a fun climb.

Alas, the sun didn't provide enough to keep us there all day. Again we ended our day in the boulder fields and lots of pictures were taken of some valiant attempts at very difficult problems.

  Day three Sara and I were on our own while our friends did an epic climbing day. Sara and I went about climbing the Solar Slab Gully. I'm certain it could have been a lot of fun, but we were having a learning experience and as it went we did pretty well. We came away with some things to remember for future climbs -- like optimizing our activities so we move quicker, and making sure that we double and triple check before we do something potentially stupid -- and we had a number of successes that made the learning experience worth it.

Unfortunately, it got cold and as the name implies "Gully" doesn't allow for as much of the "Solar" that we were hoping for while climbing. Though we did get back to the car before sun down, unlike our fellow climbers.

 The fourth, fifth, and sixth days we spent in the Calico Hills at Panty Wall, The Gallery and Stratocaster Wall, and Dog Wall. I managed to get a couple more leads in, and worked on a few harder problems, but ultimately was pretty burned out by the prior days and needed to rest. I have a lot of work to do so I can do multiple days in a row and keep up with our younger friends. My excuse is that I have put on some muscle and now have more to haul up the wall...but really I just need to work on my endurance.

Our last day was just hanging in the boulder field, and I tried to work on a few problems but I really just didn't have anything left. Endurance. That is the goal for this spring.